1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital electric still camera wherein image data is recorded in a memory card, and more particularly to a digital electric still camera wherein the data compression rate of the image data is displayed.
2. Related Art
In digital electric still cameras, a photoelectric image signal outputted from a CCD image sensor is converted into digital image data, and the digital image data is written in a memory medium. The conventional digital electric still cameras use a floppy disc or a memory card as the memory medium. Because the memory card stores image data in a digital form, the quality of the reproduced image is better than that read from the floppy disc. However, the conventional digital electric still cameras with the memory card have not had a reproducing function therein, and a separate reproducing device is therefore needed, in which the memory card is set for reproduction and is connected to a monitor device.
However, the conventional digital electric still cameras compress the image data in a data compression circuit in order to record as many picture frames as possible in one memory card. The data compression rate is manually selectable by a picture mode button, and the selected compression rate is displayed on a display of the camera during photographing.
Although a large data compression rate makes it possible to record a large number of picture frames in a single memory card, the quality of pictures is lowered, so that some photographic scenes may have a low quality which is too difficult to appreciate. On the contrary, if a smaller data compression rate is selected, the quality of pictures would be improved, but the total number of recordable picture frames per memory card becomes smaller.
For this reason, it is desirable and important to select a suitable compression rate depending on the photographic scene, in order to prevent the quality of reproduced pictures from lowering and to use the memory card economically.
However, in conventional digital electric still cameras, the data compression rate of image data recorded in the memory card is not displayed during the reproduction, so that the photographer cannot quickly realize or master which data compression rate is suitable for an individual scene to be photographed.